In general, refrigerators are appliances that can keep food at low temperature in a storage space which is closed by doors. In detail, the refrigerators keep food fresh by producing cold air by means of heat transfer with a coolant at low temperature and low pressure through a refrigeration cycle and maintaining the storage space at low temperature by using the cold air.
Those refrigerators gradually increase in size and are provided with various functions with changes and increase in dietary life while refrigerators equipped with various structures and convenience devices have been put on the market.
Typical ones of the convenient devices are an ice maker that makes ices and a dispenser, which are provided in the refrigerators. The ice maker and the dispenser are for providing users with ices or drinking water and may be disposed in the compartments or the doors.
In general, the ice makes are manufactured in a type of directly filling an ice-making tray with water or a type of filling a water tank having capacity for one-time ice-making with water and mounting the water tank such that the water is supplied from the water tank to the ice-making tray.
The structures, however, can make only one-time ices, and when a large-capacity water tank is used, the water is frozen in the water tank due to properties about temperature of the freezing compartment and continuous ice-making becomes impossible.
Refrigerators that are provided with a water supply line directed connected with the waterworks to continuously operate the ice maker and a dispenser also connected with the water supply line to take out drinking water from the dispenser have been come up with in order to remove the problems.
Further, refrigerators having a structure that is equipped with a water tank where water for making ice is supplied in the compartments and supplying water to the ice maker and the dispenser by using a pump and a water supply channel have been developed.
In the refrigerators having the structure, air may be mixed and supplied through the water supply channel, when water is completely supplied from the water tank without remaining or with a small amount of water remaining in the water tank, or in an abnormal state.
As air is mixed and supplied, the amount of ices made by the ice maker and is not uniform and the water splashes when being taken out of the dispenser, thereby causing problems in supplying water. Further, if air is mixed in the pump when the pump is operated again after supplying water, large load is exerted in the pump.
Further, since the water remaining in the pipe of the dispenser drops down after the water is taken out of the dispenser by operation of the dispenser in the refrigerators of the related art, which makes users sensitively dissatisfied.